The Arizona sentinel., 1887-07-16
LIFE ON THE RAIL.
Duties and Annoyances of the Men
 Who Run Trains.
Engineers With Passion for Running into CattIe-Firemen aud Their Duties Story of Conductor Who Under
 stood His Business-Porters, Etc.

From the conductor uOWn 10 the pea nut-boy there is noted a new deal in train-hauds, says the San Francisco Chronicle Such men as are now en- ployed did not run on trains twenty years ago. Nor did they drive stage coaches or shoot Indians. There was a happy-go-lucky streak in the charac- ter of the old-time railroader. One finds it only now and then in the ticket-puncher or baggage-handler of to-day. There was a sort of sailor-like romance about the lives of people who iran on the line" then that one will almost seek in vain for now. Your old time railroader was an important in dividual, made so by the fact that there were few railroads in existence when he stepped upon the stage, or rather upon the car. So much depend ed upon individual action and respon- sibility then. Yet, in spite of all his cares the train hand was jolly. He had his half-hours of joy at the long stops at way stations, flirting with pretty country lassies, or quafiag ginger ale or something stronger at the refresh ment counter The runs were short, the time was slow, and the stops were long. The only excitement was in running down cattle that happened to stray upon the track.
 But the automatic brake, the patent coupler, and double track have wrought great change The rail roader of the day is more of a ma chine-more part of the train itself than anything else. Instead of short runs and long stops there are long runs and short stops. The speed has almost doubled, and clock-work preci- sion in manipulating the thousands of trains on the net work of tracks has become necessity.
 It is this multiplication of railroads ana trains that has dragged the train hand down from his pinnacle of dig nifed isolation. He has become a very common unit, not to say vulgar fraction. As matter of fact, he is just as important, especially in his own estimation, as he was twenty years ago, but with the loss of the happy-go-lucky air and his relegation to machine duty, the romance of his position sinks out of sight. Still, he is not altogether hopeless case, as he is likely to be lifted from the hum-drum of train life into the hum-drum of life in a general railway office; perhaps as sixteenth assistant general freight agent, or per haps-who knows-as general mana ger or president And then the oppor- tunity for Knocking down" or ''div- wing" with some one who knocks down is as good as ever.
 A railroad conductor said the other day: "Some railroaders call theirs dogs life; others say it is worse, but rotice that they nearly all stick to it until they get too old for any thing else-even for keeping bar. think that speaks volumes for this business. If it was no good they would not hang on to it the way they do, unless it is that this tenacity is given them to make the punishment fit the crime"
 The life is evidently not a sweet dreamland fancy or any thing of the sort, but there are plenty of people who are living it and growing gray-headed in it, and many of them are better off than they would be if they were to cease their everyday whirl and rush and set tie down to quieter things.
 Take the engineer, for instance He is not the nerve-shattered, brain wrought, and fear-excited man whom fancy paints as standing at the throttle with straining eye and careworn face, one hand clutching the cold steel, while in the other he carries hundreds of in- nocent lives.
 Truth to say, he may be nervous, and few there are in his position whose nerves are not affected, but he is not always standing with his heart in his mouth while his engine flies along the | track. He early learns to accept the | situation as one of great responsibility, | but if there is any ease or enjoyment | to be extracted from it he knows that l no one, from the president down to paste auditor, is going to blame him for taking it. He soon works his way into a channel where an easy-going but st the same time dutiful perform.